Such a surface mountable component, as is described, for example, in DE 20 2008 005 708 U1, is typically electrically conductively connected to a circuit board (“printed circuit board”, PCB). For this purpose such a component, however, has no connection wires which project out of the housing of the component or which protrude from the housing in order to be connected to the circuit board in accordance with the principle of through plug assembly. In contrast to this, a surface mountable component has a plurality of solderable connection areas by means of which the component is soldered to the circuit board. For this purpose a corresponding arrangement of contacting surfaces is provided at the circuit board. The contacting surfaces are, for example, printed with a soldering paste by means of screen printing or stencil printing. Following the equipping of the circuit board with a plurality of components these are soldered to the contacting surfaces of the circuit board by a so-called reflow process. Alternatively to this it is also known to initially bond the surface mountable components at the circuit board and to finally solder these in a so-called wave bath or a splash bath.
The arrangement of the connection areas at the underside of the components is precisely defined so that a corresponding arrangement of contacting surfaces can be provided at the associated circuit board.
A particular advantage of components designed in this manner consists therein that these only require very little space on the circuit board. Thus a large packing density results.
However, on soldering such surface mountable components, the danger arises that excess solder comes into contact with the side surfaces of the components, which side surfaces are generally formed by the semiconductor substrate, and thereby cause short circuits. The side surfaces of such a surface mountable component are namely typically non-electrically insulated due to the manufacturing process. The danger of short circuits can thereby be prevented that the connection areas are shifted from the edge of the component towards the inside. This is, however, frequently not possible or is not desired due to reasons of space. Furthermore, the spacing of the connection areas to the underside of the component and thus finally also to the side surfaces can be increased in that additional layers in the form of thick metallized layers and/or platforms of insulation layers are provided between the underside of the component and the connection areas. Both variants can, however, technically only be implemented in a limited manner and require additional process steps on the manufacture of the component which are associated with a high demand in effort and cost.
For this reason it is the object of the invention to provide an electronic component of the initially named kind which can be mounted safely and reliably at the circuit board and which can be manufactured cost-effectively.